On Wed 12 Mar, Michael Lazzaro wrote: > > On Tuesday, March 11, 2003, at 12:39 PM, Austin Hastings wrote: > > You want C<multi> to tell the compiler to build in multiple dispatch. > > Any invocation of C<foo> after C<multi foo> is going to be a penny > > dropped into the great Pachinko game of multimethod-dispatchery. By > > default, if no winning multi appears, the call falls out the bottom and > > winds up invoking the original sub(). > > OK, hmm. What Damian is saying is that, tentatively, it's the > reverse... it calls the sub if theres a sub, then the multi if there's > a multi. So overriding a sub with a multi wouldn't work, but it would > *silently* not work, because you could just never get to the multi > version (well, not without a bit of introspection).
Messy > > I agree that the issue of overriding an inherited/preexisting C<sub> -- > like one from a CPAN module -- with a set of C<multi> implementations > is a useful capability; it would allow you to extend predefined > routines to handle different arguments without getting into OO. But I > sure worry that it makes accidental redefinition of subs invisible in > many cases. > Perhaps it should be possible to explicitly promote (or is it demote?): sub factorial is multi; Richard -- Personal [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.waveney.org Telecoms [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.WaveneyConsulting.com Web services [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.wavwebs.com Independent Telecomms Specialist, ATM expert, Web Analyst & Services
